Another View: Killings call for comprehensive action

As always after such inexplicable tragedies as Monday's massacre at the Washington Navy Yard, Americans want to believe there is some simple way to stop the madness. But, as always, there is no magic formula for separating deranged young men-yes, the killers are typically young men-from dangerous weapons. Americans have grown much better at honoring the victims of mass shootings than at preventing people from becoming victims in the first place.

In a nation where the Constitution and state and local laws protect the right to own guns, and make it convenient for the vast majority of law-abiding citizens to get and carry them, it is almost impossible to safeguard every public place and stop every lone madman.

The red flags always flap most fiercely with hindsight.

The background check on gunman Aaron Alexis, a troubled former Navy reservist turned military contractor, was clearly flawed. And security could have been tighter at a military facility such as the Navy Yard. But what about the "softer" targets? Besides an elementary school in Connecticut and a movie theater in Colorado, spree killers have attacked a Sikh temple, private offices, restaurants, an immigration center, a hair salon and a shopping mall-all in the last five years. Should there be metal detectors and private guards everywhere? Could there be?

Law enforcement officials said Tuesday that Alexis had long exhibited symptoms of mental illness. That probably should have cost him his security clearance and stopped him from legally buying a shotgun. But predicting who is deranged enough to go on a shooting spree is notoriously difficult. Most of the mentally ill are dangerous only to themselves. And the prohibition against buying guns generally applies to those who have been formally ordered into treatment.

But just because it's hard to stop shooting sprees is no reason to give up, mop up the blood and pretend that nothing can done. An all-of-the-above approach beats none-of-the-above resignation.

The necessary steps are as familiar as they are controversial: expanded background checks for gun purchasers; better cooperation by the many states that don't take seriously their responsibility to turn over mental health records to the FBI database; reasonable limits on the size of magazines for semiautomatic weapons; and more research into the markers of dangerous mental illness.

Despite the gridlock in Congress over gun laws, the memory of the 12 Navy Yard victims demands continued pursuit of every reasonable way to prevent not just the high-profile shootings such as these, which get much of the nation's attention, but also the everyday gun violence that claims more than 30,000 lives in America each year.

To think otherwise means that the nation simply accepts these tragedies as a reasonable trade-off for its gun policies. And that's even more senseless than the shootings themselves.

--USA Today

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Another View: Killings call for comprehensive action

As always after such inexplicable tragedies as Monday's massacre at the Washington Navy Yard, Americans want to believe there is some simple way to stop the madness.